The Positronic Man

But what do I know about beauty? Andrew asked himself acidly. Or about what might be sacred? I am only a robot, after all. Whatever aesthetic or spiritual perceptions I may think I have are mere accidents of the positronic pathways, unintended, unreliable, perhaps to be regarded as manufacturing defects rather than any kind of meritorious special feature of my construction.

He turned away from the viewing screen and spent most of the rest of the voyage sitting calmly in his gravity sling, waiting to get to the Moon.

Three officials of the lunar office of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men were at the Luna City spaceport to greet Andrew when he disembarked: two men and a woman. They provided him-when he was done with all the maddening little bureaucratic maneuvers of arrival and was finally allowed to step out of the ship and approach the welcoming committee-with one of the most powerful surprises of his long life.

When he first noticed them they were waving to him. Andrew knew that they were here for him because the woman carried a brightly lettered placard that said, WELCOME TO LUNA CITY, ANDREW MARTIN! But what he didn't expect was that the younger of the two men in the group would walk up to him, put out his hand, and say with a warm smile, "We're absolutely thrilled that you decided to make the trip, Dr. Martin."

Dr. Martin? Dr. Martin?

The only doctorates that Andrew had received were honorary ones, and he would hardly have had the audacity ever to refer to himself as "Dr. Martin." But if the U. S. Robots man had greeted him simply as "Mr. Martin," that would have been astounding enough.

No one on Earth had ever called him "Dr. Martin" or "Mr. Martin" or anything else but "Andrew," not even once, never in all his hundred fifty-plus years.

It was unthinkable for anyone to do so. On formal occasions-when he had appeared in court, or when he was being given an award or an honorary degree-he was usually addressed as " Andrew Martin," but that was as far in the direction of formality as anybody ever went. Often enough, even when he was the guest of honor at some scientific meeting, he was addressed straightforwardly as " Andrew" by perfect strangers and no one, not even he, thought anything of it. Though most people tended to call robots by nicknames based on their serial designations rather than by the serial designations themselves, it was rare for a robot to have a surname at all. It had been Sir's special little pleasure to refer to him as " Andrew Martin "-a member of the family-rather than just " Andrew," and the custom had become permanent.

But to be called "Dr. Martin"-even "Mr. Martin"

"Is anything wrong, sir?" the U. S. Robots man asked, as Andrew stood blinking with amazement before him.

"No, of course not. Except-it's only that-ah-"

"Sir?"

Being called "sir" like that didn't make things any easier. It was like a repeated electrical jolt.

"Sir, what's the matter?"

They were all concerned now, frowning and gathering close around him.

Andrew said, "Are you aware that I'm a robot?"

"Well-" They exchanged troubled glances. They looked tremendously flustered. "Yes, sir. Yes, we are."

"And yet you call me 'Dr. Martin' and 'sir'?"

"Well-yes. Of course. Your work, sir-your extraordinary achievements-a simple mark of respect-you are Andrew Martin, after all!"

"Andrew Martin the robot, yes. On Earth it's not the custom to address robots as 'Dr.' something or 'Mr.' something or 'sir.' I'm not accustomed to it. It's never happened to me at all, as a matter of fact. It simply isn't done."

"Does it offend you-sir?" the woman asked, and as that last word escaped she looked as though she would have liked to swallow it.

''It surprises me, actually. It surprises me very much. On Earth-"

"Ah, but this isn't Earth," said the older of the two men. "We're a different sort of society here. You have to understand that, Dr. Martin. We're a lot more freewheeling-a lot more informal than people are on Earth-"

"Informal? And so you call a robot 'Dr.'? I would expect informal people to be calling strangers by their first names, and instead you greet me with high-flown formal honorifics, giving me a title which in fact I've never earned and have no business letting you use, and-"

They were begi

"You see, it's really hard for us to walk right up to you and call you, Andrew' just like that," the one called Carlos said. "Even though in fact you are-you are-"

He faltered into silence" A robot?" Andrew finished for him.

"A robot, yes," Carlos said indistinctly, not meeting Andrew's gaze.

"Besides," David said, "you don't look much like a robot. You don't look like a robot at all, as a matter of fact. We know that you are, of course, but nevertheless-I mean-that is-" And he flushed and looked away, too.

Things were getting tangled again. They seemed destined to put their feet in their mouths no matter what they tried to say. Andrew felt sorry for them, but a little a

"Please," he said, "I may not look much like a robot, but a robot is what I have been for more than a hundred fifty years and it comes as no great shock to me to think of myself as one. And where I come from, robots are addressed by their first names only. That seems to be the custom here too, I gather-except for me. If you have too much respect for my great accomplishments to be able to do that easily, then I appeal to the freewheeling informality you were just telling me about. This is a frontier world: let's all be equals, then. If you are Sandra and Carlos and David, then I am Andrew. Is that all right?"

They were beaming now.

"Well, if you put it that way, Andrew-" Carlos said, and stuck out his hand a second time.

After that everything went more smoothly. Some of the U. S. Robots people called him "Andrew," and some called him "Dr. Martin," and some of them would go back and forth between the two almost at random.

Andrew grew used to it. He saw that this was indeed a rough and ready culture up here, with many fewer taboos and ingrained social patterns than on Earth. The line between humans and robots was still a distinct one, yes; but Andrew himself, because of his android body and his record of high scientific achievement, occupied an ambiguous place somewhere along that boundary, and in the easygoing society on the Moon it evidently was possible for the people he worked among to forget for long stretches of time that he was a robot at all.

As for the lunar robots, they didn't seem to recognize any sign of his robot origins. Invariably they treated him with the robotic obsequiousness that was considered a human being's due. He was always "Dr. Martin" to them, with plenty of bowing and scraping and general subservience.

Andrew had mixed feelings about all of this. Despite all that he had told them about being quite accustomed to thinking of himself as a robot and being addressed like one, he was not completely sure that it was true.

On the one hand, being called "Mr." or "Dr." instead of "Andrew" was a tribute to the excellence of his android upgradings and to the high quality of his positronic brain. It had been his intention for many years to transform himself in such a way that he would move from a purely robotic identity into the gray zone of an identity that approached being human, and obviously he had achieved just that.

And yet-and yet- How strange it felt to be addressed in terms of such respect by humans! How uncomfortable it made him, really. He grew used to it but Andrew never really felt at ease with it.

These people couldn't seem to remember for any significant length of time that he was a robot; but a robot was what he was, all the same-much as he sometimes would like to pretend otherwise-and it felt vaguely fraudulent to be treated like a fellow human being by them.

Indeed, Andrew knew, he had explicitly asked for it. "Let's all be equals, then," he had told Sandra and Carlos and David at the spaceport. And they had agreed.

But there was hardly a day thereafter when he was not amazed at his own boldness. Equals? Equals? How could he have dared even to suggest such a thing? Phrasing it as a direct instruction, no less-virtually an order! Saying it in a casual, jaunty way, like one human being to another.

Hypocrisy, Andrew thought

Arrogance.

Delusions of grandeur.

Yes. Yes. Yes. He could buy a human-appearing body for himself, he could fill it with prosthetic devices that performed many of the functions of a human body whether he needed those functions performed or not, he could look human beings straight in the eye and speak coolly to them as though he were their equal-but none of that made him their equal. That was the reality that Andrew could not deny.

In the eyes of the law he was a robot and always would be, no matter how many upgrades he was given, or how ingenious they might be. He had no citizenship. He could not vote. He could not hold public office, even the most trivial. About the only civil rights Andrew had, despite all that the Charneys had done over the years on his behalf, were the right to own himself, and the right to go about freely without being humiliated by any passing human who cared to harass him, and the right to do business as a corporation. And also the right-such as it was-to pay taxes.

"Let's all be equals," he had said, as if by merely saying so he could make it be. What folly! What gall!

But the mood soon passed and rarely returned. Except in the dark moments when he berated himself this way, though, Andrew found himself enjoying his stay on the Moon, and it was a particularly fruitful time for him creatively.

The Moon was an exciting, intellectually stimulating place. The civilization of Earth was mature and sedate, but the Moon was the frontier, with all the wild energy that frontier challenges inevitably called forth.